214 – Crossfitted

Today I did something that, a year ago, I would’ve sworn I’d never do.

I went to Crossfit.

My good friend Alicia has been an avid Crossfitter for years, and more recently, Katie has gotten into it. During this whole time, I’ve been one of those guys rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at the whole CrossFit movement. There are many valid objections to the way CF does things, but there’s no denying the power of the system to keep people involved, interested and, well, fit.

My objections are well founded. CF doesn’t focus on any one thing enough to make you better at it, at least not very fast. It won’t make you a good distance runner, because you don’t run enough. It won’t make you a good power lifter, because the cycles are too arbitrary and the sets too random to qualify as a useful strength-building program. It will help you lose weight, because you’ll burn a crapload of calories, but only if you also pay attention to your diet. And don’t even get me started on “kipping.” Dumbest. Thing. Ever.

To be clear, if you come straight from the couch, you will get stronger. If you were already a runner (especially one who didn’t lift at all, as many runners don’t) walking in the door, it will have something to add to your running program. Most of the WODs (workouts of the day, in CF-speak) amount to heart rate interval training, which is proven to be effective at raising your lactate threshold and cardio performance, both essential to running fast and long. But the thing that CrossFit will make you best at is CrossFit, hence the rise of the CrossFit Games, where people essentially work out, competitively. I can’t see the draw, but then I don’t understand why people like golf, either.

Which leads to another aspect of the program that generates eyerolls, and that’s the lingo. Everything in CF has an acronym, a made up name, a slang term. The founders of the program were very careful to create a club-like culture, the better to attract those who need a social aspect to their workout plans. And while there’s no denying that it’s effective, for those of us who have been doing the same movements for decades, it all seems silly and unnecessarily complicated.

But watching the program more closely over the past six months or so, it’s become clear that some of my reasons for disliking CrossFit have everything to do with trying to make it something that it’s not. It isn’t a running program, or a cycling program, or even a powerlifting program. It’s CrossFit. If you can ignore the CF acolytes, who will tell you that no workout is as good as a CrossFit workout, and that it will make you better at everything from making waffles to climbing Everest, you’ll notice that CF itself makes no such claims. The coaches are there to help and instruct you in difficult movements, some of which are all but extinct in most gyms today. They’re there to challenge you physically and mentally by pushing what you thought were your limits. They believe in the ability of their program to help people reach overall fitness goals, but I have yet to hear one say that CF is an effective substitute for a focused, dedicated training program for another sport. And mostly, they want you to have fun, because that’ll keep you coming back, and longevity is the most important aspect of any training program.

What’s more, an honest appraisal of what goes on in most gyms takes the wind from the sails of many of my objections. While I’m insisting that CF won’t make you as strong as a dedicated strength training program, most people at typical gyms aren’t using such a program anyway. Or any program at all. And if they are, they aren’t as honest, or dedicated, or tenacious with it as they need to be, and so they never see the results they could have anyway. Likewise, I can’t remember the last time I went to a typical gym and saw people doing complex movements with anything resembling safe or effective form (notice I didn’t say correct… more on that difference another day). Essentially, many of my objections to CF could equally be applied to 90% of people in any gym anywhere, even those who are working with personal trainers. Come to think of it, I’ve seen/overheard some personal trainers giving some pretty questionable instruction…

Anyway, all that said, Katie’s “box” (slang for a CF gym… see what I mean?) has a social event on the first Friday of every month that they call Friday Frolics. Katie quietly inquired if I’d like to go, and I figured why not, since I had a bit of a hole in my lifting schedule anyway. Today’s Frolic was caveman-themed, but I was fresh out of loincloths, so she and I ripped the sleeves off some t-shirts and called it close enough. The workout started with an 800m run (which I started last and finished first… but I’m a runner), some dynamic stretching and plank work as a warm-up, and then we were divided into teams.

The workout itself was a several-stage team competition, and was made up of a plethora of kettle bell swings, sit-ups, lunges, pull-ups, jumping rope, and just about every type of squat there is, along with a little bit of running. It was up to the teams to divide the exercises, sets and reps between the team members to play to everyone’s strengths, so long as minimums for each member were met. All of this planning and organization took a bit to accomplish, so there was a fair amount of down time in between stages, but the stages themselves were pretty intense.

If I’m honest, I had a lot of fun. The people were all very friendly, the coaches helpful and positive, and they even fed me afterward. The whole experience reminded me of grade school gym class, where everything you did was characterized as playing, even though you were really exercising. At the end, I found myself wishing I had more time in my training schedule (and money in my bank account… CF ain’t cheap) to do it more often. But I don’t know when either of those things are going to happen, so for now at least, I’ll be relegated to dropping in once in a blue moon. Still, I’m not ashamed to say that my attitude about the program has shifted significantly over the past year, and I’m more inclined to give CrossFit a fair appraisal among the panoply of workout programs.